Contemplative science-fiction drama starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner

Released: November 10 (UK & Ireland)

Cocooned in the tiny bubbles that constitute our lives, planet Earth seems huge - a polluted rock cluttered with billions of competing lifeforms, whose paths rarely intersect.

As our world turns, we rarely look past national borders, let alone tilt our heads to the stars and contemplate how insignificant we are in the vast expanse of space.

To me, it's inconceivable that of all the planets we can see with the most powerful telescopes or probes, and the millions that will remain forever hidden, only our astronomical home is capable of sustaining intelligent life.

The greater surprise, surely, would be that we are alone.

Based on a short story by Ted Chiang, Arrival is contemplative science-fiction drama, which imagines mankind's shambolic reaction to first contact with an otherworldly race, and the dangerous fractures that would appear as nations disagree over the best course of action.

If governments can't cooperate over the environment, finance and immigration, what hope is there when we collectively face a possible extinction event?

Director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Eric Heisserer aren't interested in Independence Day-style pyrotechnics, although their film is punctuated with impressive special effects sequences.

Like Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Arrival philosophises and digests before it considers locking and loading a weapon.

Twelve giant obloid spacecraft enter Earth's atmosphere and descend over seemingly random locations including Devon, the Black Sea and a lush meadow in Montana.

US Army Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) leads the American response and he recruits emotionally scarred linguistics expert Dr Louise Banks (Amy Adams) to decipher a coded language used by the visitors.

Banishing painful memories of her young daughter's death, Louise aligns with military scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) to unravel the conundrum, while the CIA, led by Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg), considers the terrifying possibility that we are in the calm before an intergalactic storm.

"If this is some peaceful first contact, why send 12 ships? Why not send one?" asks a woman on a radio show, encapsulating the paranoia sweeping the globe.

As nations grow nervous, especially General Shang (Tzi Ma), chairman of the People's Liberation Army in China, Louise and Ian take potentially lethal leaps of faith to better understand the aliens' intentions.

Meanwhile, Captain Marks (Mark O'Brien) and other subordinates under Weber's command debate a blunt show of force against the tentacled extra-terrestrials.

Anchored by Adams' mesmerizing performance, Arrival is an extremely stylish tale of grief and self-sacrifice that uncoils beautifully for two hours.

Pacing is deliberately pedestrian, cranking up tension as flawed characters wrestle with agonising questions of mortality.

The two visible aliens - affectionately referred to as Abbott and Costello - are a triumph of digital wizardry that doesn't distract from the script's deep emotional core.

At the very moment we discover we are not alone, we have never been further apart.

:: SWEARING :: NO SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 8/10

AMERICAN PASTORAL (15, 108 mins) Drama/Romance. Ewan McGregor, Jennifer Connelly, Dakota Fanning, Uzo Aduba, Rupert Evans, Peter Riegert, David Strathairn. Director: Ewan McGregor.

Released: November 11 (UK & Ireland)

If one toxic emotion shepherded Donald Trump to the White House, it was anger: the simmering rage of everymen and women across America, fed up with the self-serving political establishment.

The disillusioned and disenfranchised spoke at the ballot box, and they were heard.

Indignation also percolates beneath the surface of American Pastoral, a 1960s-set suburban drama about a radicalized girl, whose vociferous rejection of social injustice tears her family apart.

Directed by Ewan McGregor, who unwisely casts himself in a lead role with a wavering American accent, it's a film that should bristle with intent and deliver each emotional wallop with the precision of a prize fighter.

Sadly, the opposite is true.

Working from a screenplay by John Romano, McGregor daubs a portrait of middle-class malaise that is pedestrian to the point of being soporific, and devoid of pathos or dramatic tension.

It's difficult to muster sympathy or concern for the anaemic characters, even with a stellar cast including Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly illuminating these misguided protagonists.

McGregor employs the framing device of a 40-year high school reunion, where author Nathan Zuckerman (David Strathairn) wanders familiar corridors and meets his old friend, Jerry Levov (Rupert Evans).

They reminisce and Jerry reveals that he has just buried his star athlete older brother, Seymour (McGregor), who was known affectionately as the "Swede".

Apparently, Seymour's turbulent relationship with his daughter was at the heart of his decline.

"I told him, 'Let her go or it will rot your gut and take your life too...' And it did," laments Jerry.

In flashback, we see Jewish American businessman Seymour assume control of the Newark Maid Glove factory established by his father (Peter Riegert) and marry an Irish-Catholic girl called Dawn (Connelly), who once proudly held the title of Miss New Jersey.

Seymour and Dawn raise a stuttering daughter called Merry (Dakota Fanning) on their farm in Old Rimrock, where they are largely cocooned from a rapidly changing world.

As shocking images of Vietnam flicker on the TV screen, Merry discovers her voice and lashes out.

"You're not anti-war," counters Dawn. "You're anti-everything!"

A shocking act of violence at Rimrock post office changes the Levovs' cosy existence forever.

American Pastoral is a stagnant adaptation of Philip Roth's book, which intercuts archive news footage of Martin Luther King and the moon landing to provide a historical backdrop to the family's turmoil.

McGregor is miscast and shares inert screen chemistry with Connelly, while Fanning fails to grapple the complexities of her rebel in the film's turgid final act.

A sparky supporting turn from Uzo Aduba as the factory's feisty forewoman peps up a pivotal sequence set during the real-life Newark race riots.

When it comes to casting a vote for McGregor's picture, regrettably, it's a vote of no confidence.

:: SWEARING :: NO SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 4/10